


to wake and find you

by rilla



Series: All The Days Of My Life [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:04:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A postscript to All The Days Of My Life. Harry's point of view, set just after the ending of the original fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to wake and find you

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Lesleá Newman's poem Possibly. This is for an anon commenter on tumblr who wanted to know how Harry feels to have Zayn finally come back to him. You can read All The Days Of My Life [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3718558).

When Zayn leaves two days later, Harry’s politely but entirely certain that he won’t ever come back again. “I’ve got to do promo,” Zayn says, with a viciously dark expression on his face. He always hated promo when they were still in the band, particularly after the first couple of years were over and the fun had worn off. Harry’s never minded doing interviews and silly little videos and pulling stupid stunts on breakfast TV, but sitting in the same room for an entire day and getting asked the same questions all over again, that can get wearying. At the end of the band, for their last album, that was pretty much all that happened, along with the endless late night chat shows, like they were suddenly too cool to pull pranks and throw flour bombs at people and do acapella songs at forty regional radio stations per day.

He still doesn’t mind it, though. There are worse things in the world than talking about himself for eight hours straight, such as when his brand new sort-of-boyfriend/ex-husband’s about to leave his house to go to New York for interviews and to possibly never return. Harry smiles over at him, attempting to look like a normal person. It seems to work because Zayn just smiles back at him, sweet and open. “And when do you want to meet up again?” Harry asks, hoping he sounds extremely chilled out and cool and not as though the fact that Zayn’s leaving feels like yet another heartbreak that he’s dealt him. If he never comes back it’ll be fine – Harry’s got over it before, sort of, he’s an absolute pro at it by now. Admittedly he feels like this time he might have to drown himself in his swimming pool if Zayn leaves forever, but logically, he knows he’ll probably survive.

“Er, I dunno.” Zayn huffs out a breath, squinting a bit. “Let me check my schedule.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and starts scrolling through something. “Oh my God,” he mutters to himself. “Why’s there so much?”

“Because they believe in you,” Harry points out. “And your album.” _The album you wrote about me_ , he wants to add, because he still can’t quite believe it. Ten perfect songs, telling the story of every fluctuation in Zayn’s heart since they split up. Ten love songs, all about Harry, all about what they shared together. Forty minutes of proof that Zayn cared as much as Harry did all along. God, maybe he will come back. Harry’s almost starting to believe it.

“Yeah?” Zayn’s face crinkles up into the sort of smile that makes Harry’s insides sing with joy. “Thanks, babe. Shit.” He glances at the front door and then confesses “I don’t want to leave.”

“So stay,” Harry says, even though he knows Zayn won’t.

“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head. “They’ve worked out all this stuff… I have to go on chat shows, I’ve got so many interviews, I have to talk about stuff, about my _feelings_ …”

“That’s a shame, when you don’t have any feelings,” Harry says.

Zayn looks at him, his face slightly less bright. “Yeah. Well, exactly,” he says. He frowns at his phone some more and then he says, “I’ll forward you the email. It’s got everything I have to do on it.” Then he looks back into Harry’s eyes and says earnestly, “Any time you’re free, come with me, okay? Any time you have a night spare. I can pay for the flights—”

“I was in One Direction too,” Harry points out gently. _We’re not in Perrie territory any more, Toto._ “I can afford the flights.”

“I know you can.” Zayn’s looking at him as if he’s a massive thicko and Harry feels that old shame sweep over him, the way it always did when Zayn was dismissive, or snorted at something Harry said, or turned his face sideways to look out of the window when Harry was halfway through a story. _Your stories are always fucking boring_ , he said once, when they were having one of their off spells, when Zayn had been doing his best to be faithful to Perrie, a couple of months after they’d got engaged. _Like I can be arsed to listen to all that shit_. He knows what Zayn’s like, he knows that he conjures things out of midair and throws them as hard as he can to spite people when he feels cornered and afraid, but Harry still sort of wishes he wouldn’t do that. It isn’t very nice.

He smiles. Tries to smile. “I just—” he begins haltingly, and Zayn cuts him off and says, “I was just trying to be romantic, you silly shit.” He’s looking at Harry in a way that makes him want to fall onto the floor and melt into an adoring puddle. He’s looking at Harry in the old way, the way that made Harry think that maybe Zayn loved him, for a while. He’s starting to believe that again these days, but it’s going to take a little practice, and some time too, to get used to it. Zayn said that he loved him when he arrived, and a couple of times since then, but words don’t really mean much these days. Getting older and more cynical and being less starry-eyed and naïve is sometimes terrible, but it’s necessary too, when you’ve been in love with Zayn Malik for as long as Harry has.

“You don’t need to be romantic with me,” Harry says. “All you have to do is be here.”

Zayn’s face does something awful and crumpled. “But I can’t be here,” he says tightly. “I have to go to places. I have to go on Saturday Night Live. By myself!”

“I meant you have to be here when you get home,” Harry says, and Zayn’s face gets even more crumpled and confused. “Being here in spirit is the same as being here physically,” he tries.

“No, it’s not,” Zayn says, with absolute accuracy. “It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Well,” Harry says. Zayn’s standing there looking like a flustered baby duck, all mad fluffy hair because he just got out of the shower and wrinkled nose and pursed lips. “We can FaceTime.”

“So you won’t come?” Zayn says. There’s a note of desperation in his voice. “I thought that maybe…”

“I’ve got a life too. I’ve got stuff to do,” Harry says, which is true: he has studio time booked. Even still, that can be cancelled, probably. He can sort things out. He can make things work. He can make them effortless, in a way that they never were before. He admits, “All I want is to see you as much as I can.”

“Really?” Zayn says. The baby duck face has gone and he mostly just looks wide-eyed and relieved now. There’s a moment, and Harry nods, and then Zayn darts forwards into his arms. “I’m going to miss you so much,” he says into the side of Harry’s neck, like a dam’s just burst in his heart and he can’t stop himself. “I’ve missed you for so long and now I have to do fucking promo and I hate promo and I don’t want to spend even more time missing you and it isn’t fucking fair.”

“Your album’s about me,” Harry says. Against him Zayn feels lean and wiry and strong and warm, pressing against Harry as though he knows that their bodies fit together perfectly, which they do, they always have. Harry turns his head a little so he can press a kiss onto the side of Zayn’s head. He smells like Harry’s shampoo and his own cologne. Harry wants to hold him forever in this hallway and inhale him and revel in the fact that finally Zayn is his. God, finally, after so long of wanting him. “You can talk about me a lot, if you want.”

“I banned questions on you before,” Zayn says, sounding choked up. “I didn’t want to be a mess.”

“Be a mess for me,” Harry tells him. Shit, the idea of Zayn being the one who falls apart, just this time. He never wants him to be unhappy, he wants to hold him and guide him away from everything that makes his voice do that terrible staccato thing, everything that makes him angry and cruel-tongued, but just for now Harry would like to be the one who isn’t in the middle of an emotional breakdown. “Just this once.”

“All right,” Zayn says. He pulls back a bit and looks up into Harry’s face and smiles at him, looking a bit wobbly, stroking Harry’s hair back, touching his cheekbone with the pad of his thumb, his affectionate gaze like flickers of warmth pressing against Harry’s skin. There’s so much liking there in his face. “I’m going to miss you,” he says again, and leans forward to kiss Harry once, twice, and then one more time. Probably the hug after that is more important and more loving: it’s bonecrunching in its intensity, warm and strong. Harry feels so fully enveloped in his arms. “I love you,” Zayn says fiercely in his ear, and then, as he pulls away, “Phone me.”

“I will,” Harry says, as Zayn opens his front door and slips outside into the blazing sunlight, and then he adds, as Zayn shoulders his backpack and starts to make his way down to the waiting car on the driveway, “I love you too.”

Zayn throws a smile over his shoulder, joyful and bright in a way that Harry can’t help but smile back at, and then he’s gone.

*

Harry goes to meet him in New York, obviously. He whoops from backstage when Zayn performs on SNL, and then at the end when all the guests and performers are congregating onstage as the credits roll over them Zayn darts backstage, grabs his hands, pulls him out. “I want you there with me!” he says, and Harry says, “What? But I’ve got ketchup on my T-shirt from that hotdog you made me eat because you wanted to experience it vicariously,” but Zayn yanks him out anyway. They’re not at the front exactly, more off to the side, but they’re holding hands and Zayn throws him a smile sideways, gleeful like he’s fizzing over with suppressed excitement, and obviously it makes the headlines. _Former 1D Lovers Reunite?_ blasts _The Sun_ , and the _Guardian_ just mentions _Malik’s ex-husband, former bandmate Harry Styles, made an appearance onstage_ , which is far more acceptable.

The next morning they lie in bed together, Zayn’s ankle hooked comfortably over Harry’s, and read the papers together on their phones. “Anne, Harry’s mother, is said to be concerned about their reunion,” Zayn reads out, and nudges Harry in the ribs with his ridiculously pointy elbow. “Is she?”

“No,” Harry says. “Actually, she’s pretty happy.” She hadn’t been happy for a while, if he’s completely honest, with all the to-ing and fro-ing, and with the lack of truthfulness. _I thought you boys were really in love_ , she’d said, a couple of times, and Harry had shrugged mutely. _We were_ , he’d wanted to say. _We are_. She’s pleased with this, though. “He just showed up?” she’d said delightedly the next day, when Zayn had been sleeping off his jet lag and Harry had rung her while he’d been making a sugar-free cake that Zayn had later roundly rejected. “To tell you he loved you?” she’d said. “Harry, it’s like a _film._ ”

He supposes it was, really. Zayn there suddenly in the sunlight, nervous and London-pale and tired from work, from tearing his heart open and telling the world about his love for Harry, his grief about the end of their relationship, how much he had enjoyed it while it had lasted. Harry remembers that too: the desperation he’d felt to make the most of every moment with Zayn, every day he’d spent at Zayn’s house, conscious that the days, the hours, the minutes, they were all slipping by like sand through an hourglass. He’d thought then that they wouldn’t get forever, and that a happy ending was resolutely out of their reach. He’s so glad that he’s been proven wrong. 

Next to him in bed, Zayn dips his head so that he can press an absent-minded kiss onto Harry’s shoulder. “Good. I miss your mum,” he says, and laughs. “Or should I say my ex-mother in law?”

“Your future mother in law,” Harry says, testing it out because he’s a wild rebel.

“My future mother in law,” Zayn agrees absently, which is nice. He’s wild haired and there are tired shadows under his eyes. After a moment Harry feels the weight of Zayn’s head on his shoulder. “Sugarscape says they were rooting for us all along,” he says, sounding sleepy. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”

“So was I,” Harry says. He drops a quick kiss onto Zayn’s forehead. “So what’s next?”

“Umm.” When Harry glances sideways Zayn’s eyes are closed. “I emailed you my schedule, remember?”

“Oh, you’re going to Japan, aren’t you?”

“Am I? Well, that’s what’s next.”

“I can’t come to that,” Harry tells him softly. “I need to get back to the studio. Gary, he’s got to get back to England soon, and—”

“It’s really shit that you aren’t prepared to give up your entire life to follow me around while I do a press tour,” Zayn says. “Call yourself a fucking boyfriend.”

Harry laughs. “I haven’t called myself a boyfriend.”

“You should start,” Zayn tells him firmly. “I think I’m back in London in a couple of weeks. Do you want to come and stay?”

“Yes,” Harry tells him immediately. His stays at Zayn’s house have always been fraught, temporary things. Living his life out of a suitcase that he was too afraid to unpack in case Zayn reminded him in that caustic, detached voice that the arrangement they had was only temporary, when Harry had spent half his life trying to forget that. In hindsight, he thinks that maybe they were both practising self-preservation, in the only ways they knew how. “Can I have a drawer this time?”

“Can you have a drawer?” Zayn says, sounding amused. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you know,” Harry says. “You never let me unpack before.”

There’s a moment of silence. Zayn doesn’t feel as relaxed and sleepy as he did before; his body’s taut, a piano string, a tensed high wire. “I never said that, did I?”

“It was implied,” Harry says, and strokes Zayn’s hair to take away any residual pain, any guilt, any sadness. “It’s okay. We’re okay now.”

“I didn’t know that I implied that. I never meant to.” He sounds like he’s aching, and it makes every bit of Harry hurt. He frowns and manages to yank Zayn on top of him, awkward and sort of lumbering, Zayn half-laughing in protest before he settles on top of Harry, chests pressed together, legs tangled. Zayn doesn’t quite look in his eyes when they’re finally still. Harry remembers that from a while ago, when they had no idea what they were to each other. It’s sort of terrible.

“Listen,” Harry says. “That’s all in the past now. I… Zayn, will you fucking look at me?”

Zayn does so unwillingly, which still feels like a tiny triumph.

“Thank you,” Harry says. “As I was trying to say before you decided to demonstrate your terrible social skills…”

“Hey,” Zayn says, but he’s laughing properly now, vibrating against Harry, which is good. Harry touches his back, runs a hand up the line of his spine. God, he’s so gorgeous. Harry loves every bit of him so much, the open honest way he’s looking into Harry’s eyes now finally, the easiness of his smile and the familiar smell of his skin. He loves the difficult parts of him as well, the spiky awkwardness, the defensiveness, the sudden violent roll of his temper. Loving Zayn is a process that Harry thinks he’ll spend his whole life on and keep getting better at. He’s okay with that. In fact, he thinks it might be all he wants.

He touches the side of Zayn’s face and Zayn turns to kiss the inside of his wrist. Harry has another terrible melty moment but he valiantly gets himself together. “We’ve made mistakes. Both of us. That’s all in the past now. All I want is to be with you and to make you happy and—”

“Me too,” Zayn says. “Me too.” He kisses Harry hard then, like he’s making a million promises that he’ll keep this time, that they both will. Harry rolls him over, so hard that Zayn’s back hits the mattress with a thump; his eyes are wide with surprise for a moment and then they narrow as he looks up at Harry with a smile that’s half arousal and half challenge. Harry can feel his cock half hard against his thigh and he touches Zayn slowly, his collarbone, the line of his clavicle, the tattoos on his side and his belly, the narrow line of his hip. He shivers when Harry touches the line of his thigh, lets his legs fall open, lets one of his knees rise and hook over Harry’s hip. “I want you to ruin me,” he says to Harry, low and firm, his hand tight in Harry’s hair.

Honestly, it would be rude not to.

*

They get home to London at about the same time, a couple of weeks later. Harry gets there first, which is strange, but at least he knows the code to Zayn’s gates so he doesn’t have to wait outside with the paps and fans like a strange admirer. _You’re the strangest admirer I’ve got for sure_ , is what Zayn would probably say if Harry told him that. He puts it away safely in his brain, storing it up as one of the many things he has to tell Zayn later. The list’s growing and growing the longer they’re apart and the fewer chances they get to text, to phone each other, to Skype, to FaceTime. After their divorce, when they didn't talk for a while, the list was endlessly, agonisingly long. Stupid jokes that would make Zayn laugh, that Harry had expected he’d never be able to tell him. Facts that Zayn would be interested in, that Harry had thought he’d never know now. Art that Zayn would want to drink in, that he’d probably end up discovering without any help from Harry at all. Puppy pictures that Zayn would miss out on. Facts about Harry’s family that Zayn would have been interested in because, God, they cared about each other, the old stack of first edition comic books in a room in Harry’s London house that he can finally hand over to Zayn, brand new ways to give blowjobs that he’s seen online, a whole folder of cool photos of graffiti in Harry’s phone that he can finally tell Zayn to scroll through. He’s so relieved that the millions of things he sees every day that remind him of Zayn won’t hurt him any more. Getting over him was not going well at all. 

He only has to wait a few minutes for Zayn to arrive from Gatwick, while Harry was coming through Heathrow, because airports are terrible and complicated things. “What a long fucking drive!” Zayn says as he hops out of the car, shouldering his backpack on. “Did you get through the paps outside okay?”

It was inevitable that they’d be there, really, now the two of them are back together. They’ll die out soon, probably. The two of them will find a new normal and people will stop caring and the fact that they’re together will cease to be news. That’ll be nice. Harry shrugs. “I didn’t really notice,” he confesses. “I was just looking forward to seeing you.”

Zayn looks pink and pleased. “You stupid romantic,” he says, and Harry shrugs.

They wait for the driver to leave and for the gates to hiss shut. Then they move towards each other, a smile blooming on Zayn’s face as he drops his backpack down onto the damp gravel before throwing himself into Harry’s arms. “I missed you,” he says, and kisses Harry, and pulls back so they can look into each other’s eyes and smile like absolute idiots before they kiss again.

“I missed you too. It seems like everything went well,” Harry says, stroking a hand through Zayn's hair. “I always knew it would.”

“I’m just glad to be home,” Zayn says, and smiles. “With you.”

Now that they’re together properly and now that everything’s out in the open, it seems like a massive weight’s been lifted off Zayn’s shoulders. He seems younger, somehow. A lot less guarded. He smiles more easily. It suits him. “Me too,” Harry says, as Zayn bends down and starts searching for his keys. Once he’s found them he grins at Harry in a way that’s slightly alarming, and says “Come here!”

“What?” Harry says uneasily, and then all the breath whooshes out of him as Zayn grabs him around the waist and hoists him up into a fireman’s lift. “Oh my God!” Everything is upside down. He never thought this would be the way that he died, but he supposes at least he’ll go out on a high.

Zayn’s laughing like a madman as he carries Harry up the steps at the front of his house. Then he slaps Harry’s arse, hugely and ringingly. “Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t resist it.”

Harry smacks vaguely downwards at Zayn’s bum. “Me neither,” he says, pretending he doesn’t feel nauseated and disoriented.

Zayn just laughs and somehow manages to unlock his front door one handed before hurtling inside and throwing Harry down onto one of the sofas. Harry lies back on the cushions, feeling like he might have to recline for a while, like a heroine in a romance novel. “Leave me on my fainting couch so I can die in peace,” he tells Zayn, and hooks a leg around Zayn’s thighs so he loses his balance and falls down on top of Harry, which was his plan exactly. “What was that for?”

“Well, I thought I might carry you over the threshold,” Zayn says. He’s got his eerily determined face on. He’s never worn that face when he’s been talking about their relationship before. Usually he just makes it when he really desperately wants a cigarette before an awards show, or when he feels the intense urge to impress on everyone that Tupac’s influence was much greater and more important than Fleetwood Mac’s. Harry actually agrees with him there, but he’d never say it aloud. He loves arguing with Zayn, because they tend to shout at each other and then have sex. Right now, Zayn’s wide eyed and earnest, which Harry kind of likes. He says, “I want to do everything right this time. I want you to be happy.”

Harry almost says, _We aren’t married, you idiot, so you don’t need to carry me anywhere,_ but it doesn’t seem right. If Zayn’s picking kindness every time now, he sure as hell can too. Instead he just tangles a hand in Zayn’s hair and pulls his face down to his so he can kiss him, tender and sweet. “You already have,” he tells him softly, feeling certain about this, about them, for maybe the first time in his life. “I already am.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading this! you can find me on tumblr at [flomps](http://flomps.tumblr.com) and twitter at [foracorkscrew](https://twitter.com/foracorkscrew) :)


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